IBM Report-HW Week #6

Virtual Worlds -Real Leaders What will the future bring???

This IBM article on online gaming gives us insight to the future regarding leadership roles in the workplace. It explains how online gaming can contribute valuable lessons to real life leadership in a corporate environment as businesses become more global, fast paced and competitive. Three out of every four players that were surveys by IBM in this study said that the techniques and approaches found in these online games enhanced their leadership in the workplace.

Today there are over 73 million online gamers who spend on average 22 hours per week "gaming" mostly from the age of 18-49 and a few more males than females but not by much. Specifically World of Warcraft has over 8 million players all over the world. Online gaming, know as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), show us how leaders come to be and how they operate in certain environments. The defintion of (MMORPGs) is the following from the article.

"MMORPGs are a unique and evolving area of online entertainment. They can bring together millions of different players who assume digital personalities known as avatars. Within these online games, each of which is constructed with different rules and goals, players interact with each other, form relationships, join guilds or in-game corporations, and carry out complex and
collaborative missions. Most popular games include World of Warcraft,™ Eve Online,™ and EverQuest.™ andVirtual social worlds, like Second Life.™ "

So how are gaming leaders established? They establish themselves by taking the lead. Gaming leaders are quick decision makers and more comfortable with risk and failure, this probably because the risk is not real. Individuals who might not assume a leadership role, are more prone to speak up in a virtual world where they are masked with an avatar. Leadership roles are assumed quickly in MMORPGs and are constantly changing with the tasks at hand. Most MMORGs are comprised of incentives (or rewards) and missions. Incentives are gained by completing these missions. Sometimes these missions are known as raids, which are attacks by a group of avatars with a common goal.

The elements of the online world that are easily integrated into to the business world are structure, skills and incentives -the concept of failure, not so much. Risk and failure are tolerated even encourage in virtual gaming even necessary to succeed, failure is just a part of the game not a permanent black mark or career killer. In real life its quite different. If your avatar died in a virtual game, all you have to do is start over, maybe wait a few minutes to resurrect. Thats it! In the real world in a workplace environment risk is still sometimes necessary yet scarier because it is real, but not as drastic, no one loses their lives (well some financial professionals may beg to differ lol).

It will be interesting to see what the years to come bring when it comes to onilne gaming, virtual worlds and workplace leadership. Some even believe that in the future resumes could include online gaming experience.